Cafe break-even calculator.
Enter your monthly fixed costs and your average cup economics. See how many cups per day you need to sell to break even — before you take home a cent.
Your cafe numbers
Defaults work for most small shops in the EU.
Cups per day to break even
How break-even actually works for a cafe.
Break-even isn't "covering my food cost." It's covering EVERYTHING — rent, salaries, software, insurance, plus the cost of each cup you sell. The number of cups it takes to get there is your daily floor. Below it, you're losing money. Above it, you're paying yourself.
The formula
Cups per day = (monthly fixed ÷ (net price per cup − cost per cup)) ÷ days open
The trick is the "net price per cup." Your sign says €3,40 but the state takes 20% VAT. So your real revenue per cup is €2,83 — that's what has to cover everything.
What this tells you
If the number looks scary (e.g. "180 cups a day to break even, and I'm doing 95"), three levers move it: lower your fixed costs, raise your price, or lower your cost per cup. Most owners undervalue the second one.
Worked example
Say your café has €6.800 in monthly fixed costs — rent, one barista, software, insurance — and opens 26 days a month. You sell a cup for €3,40, of which 20% is VAT, so your net price is €3,40 ÷ 1,20 = €2,83. Each cup costs you €0,90 in beans, milk, cup and lid. Your contribution per cup is €2,83 − €0,90 = €1,93. To cover the fixed costs you need €6.800 ÷ €1,93 ≈ 3.523 cups a month, which is 3.523 ÷ 26 ≈ 136 cups a day just to break even — before you take home a cent. (These numbers are an example; plug in your own above.) Now you can see the levers: shave €0,10 off the cost per cup and the daily floor drops; nudge the price up and it drops faster, because the whole increase lands in the contribution margin.
Cafe benchmarks
Your break-even number tells you the floor. These benchmarks tell you whether the costs feeding into it are normal for a small café in the first place. Every figure below is drawn from cafés tracking their daily P&L on nouz.
| Cost line | Typical / healthy | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Food cost (% of net revenue) | Median 31,4%; top quartile 27,1% | café food cost ratios |
| Food + drink cost (healthy band) | 28–32% of net revenue | coffee shop profit benchmarks |
| Labor cost (% of net revenue) | Healthy 28–34%; warning above 36% | café labor cost benchmark |
| Rent (% of net revenue) | Median 9,7%; structurally stressed above 11,5% | rent as % of revenue |
| EBIT margin (% of net revenue) | Healthy 6–12%; top quartile 13–18% | coffee shop profit benchmarks |
If your fixed costs are dominated by rent that's already above 11,5% of revenue, or your cost per cup implies a food cost well north of the 31,4% median, lowering those is often a bigger win than chasing extra cups.
Want to go deeper on the lines feeding this number? Check your cup economics with the food cost % calculator, then see what a normal trading day actually keeps with the daily profit calculator.